Opera Scotland

Cunning Little Vixen 1980Scottish Opera

Even at its Edinburgh Festival opening, this production seemed to have a miraculous quality about it. Hordes of young children played the lesser animals - frog, caterpillar, foxcubs, etc, with a confidence and sense of wit which totally eliminated the usual risk of sentimentality. The adults, whether playing animals or humans projected the full sense of the humanity of this glorious work. The designs were wonderfully clever, and the direction by Pountney, his assistant and choreographer produced something very special.

The set was essentially a raised box with curved changes of level to represent the woodland (including a hatch for the Badger's sett, later to become the Vixen's earth. The front half of the box split into two halves that could be slid out sideways leaving a courtyard for the Forester's home, the hen-run, and later the inn. Closed up it could be covered by sheets for snow, which disappearted down the hatch for the thaw as seasons changed. The owl sang from a trapexe suspended above. All so wonderfully simple and elegant, without being in any way twee.

Helen Field made a perfect, athletic and tomboyish Vixen in rust-red gymslip with feather boa, while Arthur Davies was a hilariously vain wideboy of a Fox.